Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

By Benjamin Franklin

Page 163

St. George on the signs, _always onhorseback, and never rides on_." This observation of the messengerwas, it seems, well founded; for, when in England, I understood thatMr. Pitt[113] gave it as one reason for removing this general, andsending Generals Amherst and Wolfe, _that the minister never heardfrom him, and could not know what he was doing_.

[113] William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham (1708-1778), a great English statesman and orator. Under his able administration, England won Canada from France. He was a friend of America at the time of our Revolution.

This daily expectation of sailing, and all the three packets goingdown to Sandy Hook, to join the fleet there, the passengers thought itbest to be on board, lest by a sudden order the ships should sail, andthey be left behind. There, if I remember right, we were about sixweeks, consuming our sea-stores, and oblig'd to procure more. Atlength the fleet sail'd, the general and all his army on board, boundto Louisburg, with the intent to besiege and take that fortress; allthe packet-boats in company ordered to attend the general's ship,ready to receive his dispatches when they should be ready. We were outfive days before we got a letter with leave to part, and then our shipquitted the fleet and steered for England. The other two packets hestill detained, carried them with him to Halifax, where he stayed sometime to exercise the men in sham attacks upon sham forts, then alteredhis mind as to besieging Louisburg, and returned to New York, with allhis troops, together with the two packets above mentioned, and alltheir passengers! During his absence the French and savages had takenFort George, on the frontier of that province, and the savages hadmassacred many of the garrison after capitulation.

I saw afterwards in London Captain Bonnell, who commanded one of thosepackets. He told me that, when he had been detain'd a month, heacquainted his lordship that his ship was grown foul, to a degree thatmust necessarily hinder her fast sailing, a point of consequence for apacket-boat, and requested an allowance of time to heave her down andclean her bottom. He was asked how long time that would require. Heanswered, three days. The general replied, "If you can do it in oneday, I give leave; otherwise not; for you must certainly sail the dayafter to-morrow." So he never obtain'd leave,

--To find then, whether glass had this property merely as glass,
or whether the form contributed any thing to it; we took a pane of
sash-glass, and laying it on the stand, placed a plate of lead on its upper
surface; then electrify'd that plate, and bringing a finger to it, there
was a spark and shock.

The extremities of the portions
of atmosphere over these angular parts are likewise at a greater distance
from the electrified body, as may be seen by the inspection of the above
figure; the point of the atmosphere of the angle C, being much farther from
C, than any other part of the atmosphere over the lines C, B, or B, A: And
besides the distance arising from the nature of the figure, where the
attraction is less, the particles will naturally expand to a greater
distance by their mutual repulsion.

Then if your strips of glass remain whole, you will see
that the gold is missing in several places, and instead of it a metallic
stain on both the glasses; the stains on the upper and under glass exactly
similar in the minutest stroke, as may be seen by holding them to the
light; the metal appeared to have been not only melted, but even vitrified,
or otherwise so driven into the pores of the glass, as to be protected by
it from the action of the strongest _Aqua Fortis_ and _Ag: Regia_.

But, if the electrical fluid so easily pervades
glass, how does the vial become _charged_ (as we term it) when we hold it
in our hands? Would not the fire thrown in by the wire pass through to our
hands, and so escape into the floor? Would not the bottle in that case be
left just as we found it, uncharged, as we know a metal bottle so attempted
to be charged would be? Indeed, if there be the least crack, the minutest
solution of continuity in the glass, though it remains so tight that
nothing else we know of will pass, yet the extremely subtile electrical
fluid flies through such a crack with the greatest freedom, and such a
bottle we know can never be charged: What then makes the difference between
such a bottle and one that is sound, but this, that the fluid can pass
through the one, and not through the other?[8]
29.

I shall only add, that as it has been observed
here that spirits will fire by the electrical spark in the summer time,
without heating them, when _Fahrenheit_'s thermometer is above 70; so, when
colder, if the operator puts a small flat bottle of spirits in his bosom,
or a close pocket, with the spoon, some little time before he uses them,
the heat of his body will communicate warmth more than sufficient for the
purpose.